Monday, August 20, 2012

One Simple change

“Let's say a woman walks into the room, and you start to have thoughts about her. “Oh look, she has her hair in a ponytail. That's not very flattering, is it? I wonder where she got those clothes. And she doesn't have very nice skin, either!” Or, she is much prettier than I am. I am so jealous!” The more identified we are with our personal identity, the more thoughts like this will arise. This is all part of the process by which we have created a false identity out of our data: our gender, name, hairdo, the clothes we wear, our age or whatever it might be. If we haven't recognized open intelligence as the basis for all those perceptions about ourselves, we will begin to substantialize ourselves in this way. Then we automatically do the same thing with others. We judge and label whoever we see, and try to substantialize them by describing them and setting them up as either opposed to us or aligned with us. By this process we further affirm and solidify what we believe is our own independent nature. Excerpt: One Simple Change Makes Life Easyhttp://www.balancedview.org/resources/books/